The Saudi-Iran Deal Featuring China
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 13 April 2023
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A few weeks ago, China made headlines for brokering a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia to thaw diplomatic relations after seven years of cutting ties and even more years of tense relations. Since then, we've already begun to see some downstream effects of this deal with significant movement on the war in Yemen and the reopening of Iran's embassy in Saudi Arabia.
This is a story with two major strands—one about the potential effects of a successful normalization between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and another about how China, and not the U.S., seems to have made it happen. To understand what all of this might mean for the region, Lawfare Associate Editor Hyemin Han talked to Lawfare Senior Editor Scott Anderson and CNAS Middle East Security Program Director Jonathan Lord about the contours of the deal, China's involvement in the process, and what to look out for as this deal ripens.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
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| 0:08.0 | become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:14.0 | That's patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:18.0 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, |
| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.0 | It's a good thing if we have another major power willing to invest resources |
| 0:37.0 | and maintaining stability in the Middle East, |
| 0:39.0 | if our priority is stability in the Middle East, |
| 0:41.0 | so we can focus on problem elsewhere, |
| 0:43.0 | including with that other major power, perhaps, right? |
| 0:46.0 | It becomes a problem if you end up seeing super power competition |
| 0:49.0 | and that's like reading conflict, which we saw in certain corners of the world |
| 0:52.0 | during the Cold War, other parts of the world were very stable during the Cold War. |
| 0:56.0 | And it kind of requires us to manage and consistent focusing |
| 1:00.0 | how do we think about where our shared interests are? |
| 1:03.0 | Actually, thinking of the Middle East, China and the United States have a lot of shared interests. |
| 1:06.0 | Not all of them, there's going to be spots of competition and conflict, |
| 1:09.0 | but pretending like it's all zero-sum game is a really problematic way to think of it. |
| 1:14.0 | I'm Hayman Han, Associate Editor at LawFair. |
| 1:17.0 | This is the LawFair podcast, April 13, 2023. |
| 1:23.0 | A few weeks ago, China made headlines for brokering a deal |
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